Not apropos of anything, just cool

[The New Horizons spacecraft is en route to Pluto]

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Even in Retirement

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Where Are They?

[M31, Andromeda Galaxy, is the Milky Way's near-twin and binary partner, that is, they are in orbit around each other. It is the nearest large galaxy to ours. It is 2.5 million light-years away so the picture is of how it looked 2.5 million years ago. The light from the far side is 100,000 years older than the light from the near side.]

I have never understood Enrico Fermi's question about extraterrestrials, "Why aren't they here?"

It is the same question as "Why haven't we ourselves sent starships all over the galaxy?" The answer is special relativity - it would require an immense and immensely powerful ship to accelerate to near-light speed and then to decelerate down from it at its destination. And seen from earth it would take thousands of years for such a ship to reach even the nearest star, 4 light-years away.

If the first people ever to live in a city, in addition to building the walls of Jericho 9,000 years ago, had built and sent out a starship to the nearest star at near light speed, it would still be en route today. Our galaxy is some 100,000 light years across. It is pretty damned obvious why extraterrestrials have not visited us. Even if it were physically feasible for them to do it, no small supposition, since the beginning of our civilization there has not been time enough for them to get here.

Yet Fermi was no fool. One of the leading scientists of the Twentieth Century (and, interestingly, an Italian Jew), he won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938. He has a subatomic particle, the fermion, an element, fermium, a research laboratory, the Fermi Accelerator National Lab, and a space telescope, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, named after him. I on the other hand have a blog and a lot of opinions. Even so I am willing to bet that I am right and he is wrong. Unless there were money involved, of course. Then I too would bet on Fermi. So what am I missing?

My guess is that Fermi was not as impressed as I am with special relativity. He knew Einstein personally and perhaps understood him and his physics to be as fallible as anyone else's. My guess is that Fermi saw 20th Century physics as just that - a science that would be superseded in the centuries to come, just as 18th and 19th century science had been in his time. Otherwise his remark makes no sense.

We already have intimations of that in the study of quantum entanglement, effects that operate instantly over unlimited distances. Though these are wispy subatomic things, subtle quantum effects, they nevertheless reflect something about reality that doesn't give a damn about special relativity. So maybe during the coming century or the one after it, special relativity itself will be shown to be a special case of something larger, just as it did for classical Newtonian mechanics. If that should turn out to be true, where the hell are they?

Sacre Bleu!

After all my supposedly radically independent thinking and unconventionality, all my jousting with Irish lunkheads and Gaza screamers, it turns out that my notions are no more than conventional government policy in France. France, as in Europe, as in EU. How cool is that?

France bars citizenship over veil

The French government has refused to grant citizenship to a foreign national on the grounds that he forced his wife to wear the full Islamic veil.

The man, whose current nationality was not given, needed citizenship to settle in the country with his French wife.

But Immigration Minister Eric Besson said this was being refused because he was depriving his wife of the liberty to come and go with her face uncovered.

Last week, a parliamentary committee proposed a partial ban on full veils.

It also recommended that anyone showing visible signs of "radical religious practice" be refused residence permits and citizenship.

'Integration'

In a statement, Mr Besson said he had signed a decree on Tuesday rejecting a man's citizenship application after it emerged that he had ordered his wife to cover herself with a head-to-toe veil.

"It became apparent during the regulation investigation and the prior interview that this person was compelling his wife to wear the all-covering veil, depriving her of the freedom to come and go with her face uncovered, and rejected the principles of secularism and equality between men and women," he said.

Later, the minister stressed that French law required anyone seeking naturalisation to demonstrate their desire for integration.

Mr Besson's decree has now been sent to Prime Minister Francois Fillon for approval.

The interior ministry says only 1,900 women wear full veils in France, home to Europe's biggest Muslim minority.

In 2008, a French court denied citizenship to a Moroccan woman on the grounds that her "radical" practice of Islam was incompatible with French values.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8494860.stm

Published: 2010/02/03 04:38:02 GMT

© BBC MMX

Whodunnit?

[Dubai's Burj al-Arab, the world's only seven star hotel]

From today's Wall Street Journal -

Tensions between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic militants have escalated over the past week after Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior operative who Israelis say helped smuggle weapons into Gaza, was killed in a Dubai hotel room.

Hamas officials initially accused Israel's Mossad spy agency of the killing, while Israeli officials refrained from confirming or denying involvement. On Tuesday, Arab media outlets reported that Hamas officials were suggesting agents from Arab governments rather than Israel were responsible for the killing.

That is simply the unfriendliest room service I have ever heard of.

Economic Competition in The Old West

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A Common Problem

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Let's bash the Brits

Enough of this fighting among Jews and Palestinians. Let's find common ground, something we can all hate. English cooking.

If You Are What You Eat, What Are the British?

By Bruce Cameron

Recently I found myself arguing with a British friend of mine over which tastes better: English cooking or dirt.

According to a Feb. 10 report by news agency Reuters, the issue has been settled once and for all. It's dirt.

That's not what the article actually says — what it says is that according to Dr. Graham Clayton, a researcher at Leeds University, British potato chips combine the aromas of "butterscotch, onion, cheese and ... ironing boards."

If you've ever had these chips, you're probably thinking: "Wait, ironing boards? I don't remember tasting any ironing boards; what did they do, improve the recipe?"

British potato chips differ from the American version in that the English chips are grey and soggy, as if they were laundered with dirty socks. They can be delicious if you've taken complete leave of your senses; otherwise, you might be better off checking to see what else is in the dryer.

My friend takes exception to my description of his chips — but then, this is a guy who eats baked beans and hotdogs for breakfast. (He calls the hotdog a "banger," but I know a hotdog when I see it, even if it doesn't have a ballgame in front of it.)

English cooking was deliberately designed by an ancient English king to motivate his troops to invade France. That's why my British buddy drinks stout, which looks like a glass mug full of liquid interstate highway. The beverage's name is very descriptive: Drink enough stout, and that's what you'll be.

The British love plain labels: Open my friend's cupboard, and you'll find it stacked with cans that say simply, "beans." That's it — no clue as to the kind of bean, how they are cooked or why anyone would eat them for breakfast. He's also got "Heinz salad cream" — if you need to know what flavor cream, you shouldn't be eating it.

Nor should you eat "clotted cream" — or at least, not according to my mother, who always insisted that when the milk came out in clots, it was time to throw it out. The word "clot" is intentionally unappetizing so that you'll know not to eat one, yet to the British, it's a form of dessert!

Or how about my friend's bottle of "brown sauce?" Only the Brits would think that "brown" was a flavor.

Brit: Today for lunch we've got some ironing boards in a delicate brown flavor, plus some gross clots.

Me: I think instead I'll just have a hotdog and some baked beans.

Brit: Sorry, we've stopped serving breakfast.

Me: Oh, OK.

Well, what color do the clots taste like?

Some of the labels, though, are completely incomprehensible. One small jar my friend has in his cupboard is called "Bovril," which sounds to me like something you'd take for a yeast infection. Turns out I'm wrong: Bovril is a "concentrated yeast extract drink." That's right, it doesn't cure a yeast infection, it is a yeast infection!

Another can is filled with "kipper fillets in sunflower oil." Not sure what a "kipper" is, I looked it up and came across this entry: "In the U.K., kippers, along with other preserved fish such as the bloater and the buckling ... ."

That's where I stopped reading, afraid I was going to throw a clot. Who would eat a fish called a "bloater"? That's how you describe a fish that has died from a yeast infection. One bite, and your knees will most certainly be "buckling."

For dessert, my friend has "rose-flavored jelly in milk chocolate." That's right, in England the cooking is so bad that people wander out into the garden to eat the flowers.

Brit: Do these roses taste red to you?

After munching on some ironing boards, bloating fish and clotted diary products, you might be, well, dead. If you're not, then you're probably British, which, given their diet, doesn't seem like that much of an improvement. You'll want to settle your stomach with either a good pumping or a handful of "digestive biscuits," a British cookie designed to help your body figure out what to do with all the stuff you've eaten.

Or here's an idea: Skip the meal. Catch up on your ironing, instead.

It's Here!

[Both sweetness and light]

The first buds of spring, pink and tender, have appeared on a Japanese cherry tree in my yard. The joy and beauty of rebirth and renewal are coming, are here already. In early spring it is easy to understand and appreciate the nature-cult elements of a Christianity which worships a god Who dies and lives anew in the spring. Early spring is happiness and elation and hope for the future.

Today is also the Jewish New Year of the Trees, Tu Bishvat. It is a day for planting trees, for giving money for the planting of trees in Israel. It is observed by eating tree fruits and nuts characteristic of the land of Israel, with appropriate brachot. Historically it was the day from which the fruit offerings, brought to the ancient temple in Jerusalem from all over eretz Yisrael, were dated.

The Kabbalists in Tsfat in the 1600's, led by Rabbi Isaac Luria, instituted a short seder for it, called Hemdat he-Yammim . I wonder what Haggadah they used? And whether it is still extant?

The Israel Defense Force teams in Haiti

According to the racists and hypocrites of the fake Left this was a publicity stunt. I doubt the poor bastard on the stretcher thinks it was.

Eclipses and the Future

I was looking at the NASA website for information about future total eclipses. There is a total solar eclipse in Gabon (equatorial Africa) in 2013, another in Svalbard (a Norwegian arctic island) in 2015, in Indonesia in 2016, in the United States in 2017. There is one in 2019 and then 9 during the 2020's. There is one in Australia on November 23, 2030, a week after my 84th birthday. There are six more during the 2030's. I copied down their dates and locations with progressively failing confidence. I ran out of lines in my daybook to write on with the eclipse in the Congo, Rwanda, and Kenya on April 30, 2041. The last few held less and less interest and little belief that I would see them. In 2041 I would be 94 years old. My people, particularly the men, die in our 70's.

As the dates mounted, the credibility of planning or even hoping to see them, waned. I found that I felt lonely and abandoned by the future. It would move ahead without me, cast me off without a thought. A perfunctory service, a stone, and then the business of the world, the business of the living, and more eclipses, ad infinitum. Without me.

In contemplating the world of the eclipses of the 2030's and after, I felt lonesome. I missed me.

Harvey's daughter, my niece Lucy, is two years old. She is a girl, healthy, and has good genes. She will live a long time.

Most of what kills us is no longer pathogens. We do not die of plague, smallpox, tuberculosis, malaria, cholera, as people did a century ago. Instead we die of auto-immune diseases. Diabetes is caused by an autoimmune response which destroys the insulin-producing Isles of Langerhans. Alzheimer's is caused by an auto-immune response which destroys the brain. Much heart disease is either caused or exacerbated by inflammation of coronary artery linings which is typically an immune response. Most arthritis is also an inflammation that is not a response to an injury or a pathogen and could also be said to be an auto-immune response. Cancer, though not an immune response disease, is analogous because it too involves the body destroying itself rather than being attacked by an external pathogen. Most degenerative diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis and Lou Gehrig's disease are also immune response diseases.

With the continuing progress of molecular analysis of proteins and such, it seems likely that during Lucy's lifetime auto-immune diseases will become readily treatable. Without pathogens or auto-immune and analogous diseases, life expectancies for Lucy and her peers will be long. Without degenerative diseases, their quality of life will be good.

Hey Lucy! There is a helluva good eclipse passing over Maui and most of Big Island on March 10, 2100. Have a good time and tell 'em Uncle Jack sent you.

Hard to Believe but....

[Catholic Relief Services helicopter bringing emergency supplies to Goncaives, Haiti. Catholics don't actually care about the Haitians, they are just sending aid to make themselves look good.]

There has been a lot of criticism of Israeli aid to Haiti coming from exactly those from whom one would expect it to come. The argument is made that Israeli aid is merely done to be seen to be doing good, not to aid the Haitians.

This is a good example of the intellectual dishonesty of Israel's enemies. I do not say "critics" because being a critic implies good faith.

Does one imagine that these soi-disant "critics" would have been kind to Israel if she had sent no aid? I don't think so. Yet they are silent about the glaring omission of the wealthy Arab states to send a dime or a box of bread. At the same time the Arabs are sending nothing at all, Israel is sending more, proportional to her population, than any other country.

The United States and Canada are sending aid. Every country in Europe is sending aid. Mexico and Turkey which both have experience of devastating earthquakes, are sending aid. Cuba and Venezuela are sending aid. China and Japan are sending aid. The UN is sending aid. Yet only Israel's motives are questioned.

A hundred countries send aid, yet the pseudo-Leftist enemies single out Israel's program, generally agreed to be among the fastest and most effective in delivering emergency aid, to deny the decency of their motives.

Nothing explains this enmity to the Jewish state except hostility to Jews. It is customary to close our eyes and pretend that "criticism of Israel is not necessarily anti-semitism". But neither is it necessarily not anti-semitism.

This is an example of Israel's enemies on the pseudo-Left inadvertently showing their true racist faces by omitting to connect their hostility to Israel to even a putative issue.

Observations from Real Life

If you have persistent problems with your underwear, it is possible you have them on backwards.

Ross claims this is true

Ross' mother-in-law is a lady of a certain age who regards Ross and Faith's home in the El Cerrito hills to be on the benighted frontier as compared to the more settled parts with which she is familiar. Such as Brooklyn. Consistent with her attitudes about El Cerrito and California generally are her attitudes about Ross whom she considers to be little better than a savage.

Ross spends his days rectifying torts the polyglot denizens of Fremont inflict on each other by recovering damages for them from their respective insurance companies. He also wears a large fedora which he never takes off unless he is in the shower or in bed. For the usual reason. He prays as fervently as the others in the schule and as sincerely partakes of the iced vodka shots at the oneg shabbat afterwards (one of the perks of Orthodoxy) and the occasional surreptitious toke.

Ross would be the first to admit that his mother-in-law may have a point that there more than a few places about him where the veneer of civilization runs thin. But withal he is an attentive family man unto uxorious.

Anyway, his kids have a pet bunny, an enormous Belgian Giant the size of a cocker spaniel. In the usual laissez faire manner of the Meltzer family, the bunny is not restricted to his cage but wanders the house freely, usually behind the furniture. In summer the doors are left open for the bunny to nibble the outdoor foliage at his leisure.

Ross' mother-in-law, unexpectedly seeing the bunny emerging from behind a sofa was heard to remark disapprovingly, "See, if you leave the doors open, eventually you get rabbits."

The Connecticut Compromise in Action

[Strom Thurmond filibustering the 1957 Civil Rights bill]

At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which at the time was only a constitutional convention, the small states feared a federal government dominated by the big states. The big states thought it only fair that representation be by population.

After much wrangling, now called Debate, they settled on the Connecticut Compromise. The House of Representatives was to be elected by the people and apportioned by population. The Senate was to be elected by the state legislatures, two by each state. This arrangement now appears in Article 1 of the Constitution.

In 1911, during the Progressive Era, the 17th Amendment changed this to election of senators by the people of each state, but affirmed that each state would continue to have two senators regardless of population.

The results of the Connecticut Compromise today are that the ten largest states have half the US population but only 20 senators out of 100. The twenty largest states have 70% of the population and 40 senators, not even enough to break a filibuster. 77% of the population have half the votes, 23% the other half. California, the largest state, has as many people as the 20 smallest states combined. They have 40 senators; we have 2.

Populations of small states tend to be more rural, more conservative, more religious, less educated, more Republican, and more white than big state urban populations.

The Senate has a rule that a supermajority of 60 votes are needed to end debate on a measure though only 51 are needed to pass it. "End debate" is a euphemism for breaking a filibuster(defeating a measure by preventing it from coming to a vote). Until 1975 a two thirds supermajority was required to end debate.

Thus the Senate, in which a majority of the senators are elected by a minority of the people, can be obstructed by a minority of the senators. Such a minority within a minority is what, a superminority?

I read this remarkable paragraph in Wikipedia,

Current U.S. practice

Budget bills are governed under special rules called "reconciliation" which do not allow filibusters. Reconciliation once only applied to bills that would reduce the budget deficit, but since 1996 it has been used for all matters related to budget issues.

A filibuster can be defeated by the majority party if they leave the debated issue on the agenda indefinitely, without adding anything else. Indeed, Strom Thurmond's own attempt to filibuster the Civil Rights Act was defeated when Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield refused to refer any further business to the Senate, which required the filibuster to be kept up indefinitely. Instead, the opponents were all given a chance to speak, and the matter eventually was forced to a vote. Thurmond's afore-mentioned stall holds the record for the longest filibuster in U.S. Senate history at 24 hours, 37 minutes.

Even if a filibuster attempt is unsuccessful, the process takes valuable floor time. In recent years the majority has preferred to avoid filibusters by moving to other business when a filibuster is threatened and attempts to achieve cloture have failed.

In the modern filibuster, the senators trying to block a vote do not have to hold the floor and continue to speak as long as there is a quorum. In the past, when one senator became exhausted, another would need to take over to continue the filibuster. Ultimately, the filibuster could be exhausted by a majority who would even sleep in cots outside the Senate Chamber to exhaust the filibusterers. Today, the minority just advises the majority leader that the filibuster is on. All debate on the bill is stopped until either cloture is voted by three-fifths (now 60 votes) of the Senate. Some modern Senate critics have called for a return to the old dramatic endurance contest but that would inconvenience all senators who would have to stay in session 24/7 until the filibuster is broken.^[27]

It would inconvenience them? That is why we don't have a medical insurance reform bill? Because it would inconvenience the senators? Wikipedia articles,including this one, generally seem pretty level-headed and reasonable. But I cannot believe that that is all there is to it. But that is what the current practice seems to be. There is no C-Span footage of senators making fools of themselves reading endless nonsense into the Congressional Record so as to stay at the podium indefinitely, as there was during civil rights era filibusters. Just bloodless vote-counting without the filibusterers being forced to filibuster.

With this week's election in Massachusetts, the issue has come sharply into focus. With the election of a Republican to fill the late Ted Kennedy's senate seat, the Democrats now have 59 senators, one short of the number needed to vote cloture.

In the civil rights era when a two-thirds majority was required to break a filibuster, filibusters were eventually broken and the Civil Rights bills of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights bill of 1969 were all passed over bitter Southern opposition.

The ability of the majority of the people of the United States to express their will and, one might say, to govern themselves, has come down to the nicety of whether filibusterers must literally filibuster or can do it by senatorial courtesy.

For once not a laughing matter

[High winds in northern California have blown down many trees]

If hazardous tree failure for once is not a laughing matter, then why are we laughing?

Hi-tech incomprehensibility edging closer; actually intruding

My house is rented for the week to a software company that does not have a brick-and-mortar office. They all work out of their houses and do everything they do online. On the rare occasion they get together for facetime they rent a house like mine. I looked at their website and it said they do cloud computing for medium size companies. WTF is cloud computing?

NASA thinks this is cool; I do too

Click on the arrow

Welcome home

As I rolled my suitcase up the BART path, having taken the last train from the airport, under the salmon lamplight I heard the sweet high-pitched chorus of the thousand little frogs who during wet weather live in a muddy weed patch between the path and a high concrete retaining wall. There was something so merry and joyful in the chorus that I was even more glad to be home. Given the unexplained worldwide die-off of frogs this was a happier chorus still.

Though it was after one am there was warm light from an upstairs bedroom where one of the software engineers/programmers who have rented the house for a week was keeping late hours. The welcome became problematic when I discovered that the windstorm had broken off a huge branch from Gus the Redwood Tree. It missed smashing the car but is blocking the driveway, giving me something to do first thing in the morning. Welcome home.

Dead Pool 2010 - Harvey's Picks

Here they are, read 'em and weep. 1. Stephen Hawking 2. Annette Funicello 3. Steve Jobs 4. Billy Graham 5. Kim Jung il 6. Ariel Sharon 7. Kirk Douglas 8. Elizabeth Edwards 9. Amy Winehouse 10. Rush Limbaugh (wishful thinking) Harvey

Jack's picks -

1. Pope Benedict XVI
2. Elizabeth II
3. George H. W. Bush
4. Nelson Mandela
5. Jacques Chirac
6. Robert Downey, Jr.
7. Hugh Hefner
8. Henry Kissinger
9. Tony Bennett
10. Mir Hussein Mousavi

Harvey and I have both been conservative and picked mainly dying hulks. Sharon and Hawking literaly. But his pick of Steven Jobs and mine of Robert Downey, Jr. are daring stabs at middle-aged people. I narrowly escaped making a fool of myself by picking Andy Warhol. Warhol died in 1987.